Papal claims to temporal authority reached their apogee under Pope Boniface VIII, in his papal bull Unam Sanctam. This decree stated that there was no salvation outside the Church, that those who resisted the Church, of which the Pope was sole and absolute head, resisted God, and so the temporal authority must eventually submit to the spiritual, i.e. to Pope Boniface VIII. In case of any doubt, it concluded by declaring that “we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff”.

Sadly for Boniface, this bull was not well received, and he was lucky to escape alive after the Outrage of Anagni, which was carried out by Philip IV of France’s supporters, who held the Pope captive without food or drink for three days. He died, back in Rome, just over a month later.

The truth was that the papacy could not enforce its temporal claims, so their theological accuracy, or otherwise, was merely academic. The ‘two swords’, referred to in Luke 22:38, that were the subject of so much scholastic debate, could not both be effectively wielded by the Pope.

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The consequences of Brexit are inevitably hard to judge. The counterfactual cannot be proved, so the best approach is to examine the UK against other economies. This has been done by leading Remain economists, to show Brexit-related underperformance. But they compare this country to other economies, including the United States, outside the European sphere, which have performed well not just since 2016 or 2020, depending on when you wish to start, but have consistently done better than Britain since 2008 or even 2000.

It seems to me that the more obvious comparison is to the other European economies, because it is inherently unlikely that we could have outperformed those nations had we remained in the EU, as they were our major market and suppliers. In this context, the UK’s performance is reasonably good.

Our GDP has grown by more than Germany, France and Italy since 2016, and on all measures has outperformed Germany in this period from 2020. Some of the small countries have done better than the UK, but as the German economy has historically been the driver of the EU economy, it would be surprising if we had done even better against it than we have, had we remined a member.

We do less well in GDP per capita terms, because some of our growth has come from unskilled immigrant labour, boosting the total size of the economy but not on a per person basis. Trade is the one area where the Remainers predicted the worst disaster for Britain outside the EU, but here the picture is remarkably strong. Since we voted to leave, total exports have risen by 23% in real terms, from £735 billion in 2015 to £905 billion in 2025, as noted by Emmanuel Igwe in The Critic recently.

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The hereditary peers have now been voted out of existence - the Bill removing them has received Royal Assent - and this seems a sensible time to reflect on the House of Lords, its history, and how it has changed over the many centuries of its existence.

The House of Commons has a precise date for its first meeting: 20th January 1265. Although knights representing the shires had previously been summoned to the King, it was Simon de Montfort’s decision to call Burgesses from the towns that led to the Commons as we know it. This was in response to a pressing political need - De Montfort had more support in the towns than in the shires. It was not part of a well thought through, enlightenment-style constitutional settlement.

The House of Lords has no such date, its origins are lost in the mists of time, and if you go back far enough, the Privy Council and the Lords seem to have been the same body. In the early parliaments, peers, as well as bishops and abbots, attended by writ of summons. They were called to attend the king, but did not have a right to do so, and nor did their heirs. This evolved so that peers who were summoned from 1295 were deemed to have the right to attend future parliaments, as were their heirs.

This led to an interesting quirk in the peerage, as those created by writ of summons pass by the normal laws of inheritance, while those issued by letters patent do so according to the patent. This means that generally writs of summons can pass through the female line, while patents tend to restrict it to the male line only.

The first peerage created by letters patent was by Henry VI in 1440, when he enobled the Viscount of Beaumont, with the first barony coming in 1448 to Lord Sturton. This increasingly became the norm, with no new creations by writ of summons since the 15th century.

As the way of creating peers changed, so did the composition of the house. Henry VIII was the last to summon abbots, one of whom, Abbot Whiting of Glastonbury, he infamously murdered. But bishops continued to come, and their number was finally formalised by the 1858 Bishops in the House of Lords Act.

The next change was the creation of life peerages for the judges by the 1876 Appellate Jurisdiction Act. This ensured that great legal brains could be brought into the Lords as the highest court of appeal, without creating an hereditary honour. In the 19th century, it was still considered important for a peer to be of sufficient financial standing to maintain the dignity of his peerage.

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I am delighted to announce the Mogg, Unbuttoned tour — a series of live events that will take me from the green benches of Westminster to theatres across the UK.

Tour dates:

Sat 18 Apr – Hereford (Nearly Sold Out)

Fri 8 May – Worcester

Fri 15 May – Shrewsbury (Sold Out)

Tue 19 May – Lincoln

Sun 24 May – Winchester

I would be delighted if you would join me — you can find out more and book your tickets at jacobreesmogglive.com.

You can now earn rewards by referring friends. For instance, if you can encourage three friends to subscribe, you will receive a month’s paid subscription. For more details please see the Leaderboard page.

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John Locke’s importance is not in what he did, but in what he thought and the consequences of what he wrote. His traditional biography is simple. He held no great offices of state, merely some minor ones, but his influence is still felt today.

Locke was born on 29th August 1632 in the village of Wrington in Somerset. He was baptised by Dr. Samuel Crooke, the rector of Wrington, on the day he was born. Crooke was a Puritan, and of interest to me because Veronica Crook, nanny to the Rees-Mogg family now for over 60 years, is his direct descendant. Both John Locke and I have been held in the arms of members of the Crook family as infants.

Locke’s parents, another John and his mother, Agnes, lived near Wrington in a hamlet called Belluton, just outside Pensford. Locke Senior supported the parliamentary cause in the Civil War, along with his neighbour, Alexander Popham, who owned the great local estate.

Although the Civil War effectively ruined the family fortune, the connexion with Popham was absolutely essential for the young Locke. Alexander Popham, as a Member of Parliament, had the right to propose a boy for Westminster School. He used this in favour of Locke, who in due time became a King’s Scholar, even though there was no King at that point, and from there gained entry to Christ Church, Oxford. This lucky chance was the one way in which Locke was able to achieve the education he needed to become influential.

After his education, the next most important aspect of Locke’s ascent was his friendship with Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Baron Ashley and later Lord Shaftesbury. Their encounter, for which there are two competing stories, seems to have been an immediate meeting of minds. Locke was utterly charmed by Ashley, who thought Locke a genius.

Ashley tempted Locke out of academic Oxford life and in to London, where at the age of thirty-five he took up residence in Ashley’s household, and it was in this house that he wrote ‘An Essay Concerning Toleration’. Ashley broadened Locke’s acquaintanceship and range of interests beyond the narrow academic clerical life that Oxford had offered him, and brought him to some degree of political attention.

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Privilege is a difficult word in a modern political context, but Parliamentary Privilege is a great protector, a cornerstone of the Constitution. Without it, MPs and peers cannot do their jobs, they would be beset with vexatious legal actions and would always be looking over their shoulders for fear of offending the powerful. It is worth defending as our liberties depend upon it, but it is narrowly defined as too wide a definition could lead to abuse.

Parliamentary privilege grew up historically to protect Members of both Houses as they went about their duties. From 1340 Members have been protected from ‘molestation’ when they want to enter Parliament, a point I regularly made to over-zealous security panjandrums. MPs must be free to get into the Palace because there may be an urgent vote which could be decided by one Member’s presence in the division, and agents of the Crown must not stop or in any way hinder them.

As it happens, this was an important right to maintain during the covid lockdowns, when some people wanted to ban MPs from travelling to Parliament. This would have undermined accountability, but would no doubt have made the government’s job a good deal easier.

However, free access to the precincts of Parliament is not the only or even the most important privilege, although it is an essential one. MPs benefit from freedom of speech and the protection that “the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament”.

This text from the 1689 Bill of Rights was the culmination of efforts to get the Crown to accept freedom of speech, by men such as Peter Wentworth in the reign of Elizabeth I, but it also makes a legislature effective, as it is part of the claim of Parliamentary Sovereignty.

There is no other court higher than the High Court of Parliament. The courts cannot look behind the curtain to see what has happened in either House. The Standing Orders of each House are exclusively its own business, this is called exclusive cognizance.

This was firmly established by the Bradlaugh case in 1884, where Justice Stephen quoted the great legal authority Blackstone, who wrote that “The whole of the law and custom of Parliament has its original from this one maxim, ‘that whatever matter arises concerning either House of Parliament ought to be examined, discussed, and adjudged in that House to which it relates and not elsewhere’”.

The issue at hand was that Bradlaugh had refused to take the oath to the Crown that all MPs take, because he was an atheist. Thus the Commons ordered the Serjeant-at-Arms to restrain him so that he could not take his seat. Bradlaugh maintained that the order to the Serjeant was improper, but the courts held that it was the only way of implementing the will of the House of Commons, which could not be questioned, even if it were wrong, as there were no means of appealing the Commons decision.

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Sir Keir Starmer made the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States and then ensured that a process was followed to fulfil his wish. The process came after the decision, not before. This much is clear from the cache of papers that has been released by the Cabinet Office in response to a demand for them by the House of Commons.

We also learn that the civil service was against Mandelson’s appointment, but that is not surprising. Although the 2010 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act allows for ambassadors to be political appointments, this rarely happens. From the perceived, if unfair, appearance of nepotism when Peter Jay was made Ambassador to the United States by Jim Callaghan, to the disaster of Mandelson, such appointments have not always gone well. Understandably, the Foreign Office also dislikes this type of appointment because it deprives them of the best jobs, which are the only ones ever handed out politically.

The civil service is also obsessed with process, both on the appointment and dismissal of Mandelson. This is evident from the papers that have been released. It is bureaucratic and long-winded. Even though the briefing note lists all Mandelson’s conflicts of interest, he was nonetheless asked to fill out a form listing them, and could have faced disciplinary measures from his line manager if in future he failed to send in even a nil return.

This is faintly absurd for a prime ministerial appointment, one that depends on maintaining the confidence of the prime minister rather than the line manager. And it is this type of bureaucracy that leads to the payoff to Mandelson once he was fired.

The Foreign Office failed to make any contractual change for a politician as opposed to a career diplomat. This meant that the issue of unfair dismissal arose, whereas the Prime Minister is free to sack any minister he chooses without this risk. Compensation is paid to ministers who are fired or who resign, but it is limited and there is no question of an industrial tribunal.

As the letter of engagement clearly states, the role of ambassador is a crown appointment and as such is not subject to a notice period. The contract could have been different. All ambassadors may be fired at will, and it would have been easy to adjust the terms for a politician so that he was employed on the same basis as a minister.

Failure to do so ended up being expensive. It cost the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds when Mandelson was sacked, if not the whole £75,000, and was an irresponsible oversight. A different government may well have wanted to remove a political figure, especially one as controversial as Mandelson, and would have not wanted to bill the taxpayer for the privilege. The experience of recent years proves that you cannot just assume that a government will continue until the end of its five-year nominal term of office.

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In recent decades, and especially since the Iraq War, there has been much debate over who, in the British Constitution, ought to have authority over decisions of war and peace.

In America, it is at least, in theory, simple and covered in the Constitution. The President is the Commander-in-Chief (a post held by the Sovereign in the UK following early 20th century reforms), and has all the rights that go with that office. However, a formal declaration of war requires Congressional instigation. Both houses on a simple majority in each house may send a declaration of war to the President, who may then either agree or veto it.

This has not happened since the Second World War, and has been replaced by the Authorisation for Use of Military Force, or simply unilateral Presidential action. Thus a clear constitutional separation of powers to avoid independent action has, in modern times, been inoperative.

However, the United Kingdom does not have a codified constitution, so there is no clear dividing line between the executive and the legislature. The separation of powers is not a British constitutional doctrine, and war has been more a matter of convention than a strict constitutional discipline. Nonetheless, it has an important place in our constitutional history.

The early Parliaments were often instigated by war. The reason the king summoned a mediaeval Parliament was frequently because he needed money to fight a war that had already started. Initially, a king tended to hope he could afford to go into battle on the back of his own revenues plus loans, but often found that the length of the war exceeded his ability to finance it.

By the later mediaeval period, kings were more likely to recognise this and summon Parliament before engaging in war, which inevitably gave the House of Commons an element of control over policy, via supply.

The Kings did this because taxation agreed by the Commons, as the representatives of the community, raised more money than arbitrary demands. In other words, they did not call the Commons because they were proto-democrats, but because the support of the political nation made fundraising easier.

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In many ways, the special relationship is overrated, and has been for almost as long as it has existed. Churchill had to plead with Roosevelt and cajole him constantly to receive, initially minimal, support in the struggle against Nazi Germany. It was only after Pearl Harbour that the alliance really took off and, in the post-war settlement, American hostility to the British Empire was so great that in some places a power vacuum was left that has consequences to this day.

This is especially true in the Middle East, where greater stability would have been achieved if America had essentially taken on Britain’s imperial mantle. However, this did not happen, and Eden’s Suez folly was made worse for the West by Eisenhower’s response.

Even in the golden years of the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the United States was slow to support her determination to retake the Falkland Islands, and he ordered the invasion of Grenada even though Elizabeth II was its queen. It was mainly a one-way relationship, with Margaret Thatcher approving the use of British air bases for the bombing of Libya and giving strong support, along with the Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, to the deployment of American cruise missiles to Greenham Common in Berkshire.

Tony Blair recognised, when he was Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, that the relationship with the US was the most important one for the UK, even at the cost of his relationship with the French and the Germans. This is especially important as he is an avid pro-European.

Nevertheless, this continued to be a one-way deal, with Britain supporting the US as a matter of routine. Blair’s remarkable skill was that he was able to get on both with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; two very different presidents both in style and political alignment. This made for a strong Anglo-American alliance and repaired the damage done by John Major, who allowed Tory figures to campaign against Clinton for the older Bush, leaving Clinton quite hostile to the UK when he first became president.

This matters for the UK because America is the only remaining superpower, and its involvement on the world stage is generally benign. But it needs allies, and these allies need to be realistic about what to expect in return.

American politics is not dominated by foreign affairs. The sheer size of the nation means its people do not need to be unduly concerned with events outside its borders. Global news is of comparatively little interest, and elections are not won or lost on foreign policy. There are few votes in Peoria for a successful relationship between the US and the UK.

Thus, it is important to recognise the relationship will be one-sided. It will not lead to special treatment for the UK or any change in US policy to help us out, unless that is also in American interests. Starmer did well to achieve even a small amelioration of Trump’s tariffs, but it was a palliative rather than an exclusion from an essentially hostile policy.

Nonetheless, it is, in the UK’s interest to maintain the relationship. This is because US involvement with the world matters. It is a force for good. American intervention in the two world wars, as well as its willingness to defend us under its shield in the Cold War, both were of the greatest importance. However, there is always a risk of American isolationism, and a tepid response from the UK, normally its staunchest ally, encourages those instincts.

Currently, there are three major international risks, of which Iran is obviously one, but the continuing war in Ukraine is a second and China’s threat to Taiwan a third. In all of these, our interests are aligned. Even if President Trump’s attitude towards Ukraine is not all we would want, American technology remains helpful to the Ukrainians, and the sanctions on Russia harm its military effort. Trying to keep America on board is a vital national interest, while seeking to prevent increased Chinese power is similarly important.

China under Xi Jinping is as dangerous as it was under Mao, if not more so. At least, when Mao was in charge, China was not an essential part of the supply chain. Indeed, it was a very poor country, and was not a major investor in global infrastructure. Now, the one counter to the power of Chinese communism is American capitalism. On our own, the UK has little power or influence, as was humiliatingly shown by Starmer’s recent visit to Peking and the fact that Jimmy Lai still languishes in gaol.

Similarly, we are at risk from Iran whether we join in the attacks or not. Hiding behind a veil of legal primness has not stopped an attack on our own base in Cyprus, nor has it prevented Iran supporting terrorism in the UK and arresting innocent British tourists in Iran.

By virtue of our long-standing association with the Americans, the Iranian revolutionaries have long labelled us ‘little Satan’, with the United States the ‘big Satan’. If that is our position, then we ought to act on the reality, not on a pious hope. This is the nub of the matter.

Foreign affairs is not a question of ethics or law. It is daily practice. It is a matter of realpolitik. We need to defend our interests, and that means sometimes working with regimes we do not like or approve of, which may be undemocratic and use barbarous methods against their own populations. It also means giving a huge amount of discretion to our close allies and backing their decisions even if we have our doubts.

Some doubts may be perfectly reasonable. The history of Western involvement in the Middle East is more littered with failure than success. This is not just in modern times, in the Middle Ages we were often not only unhelpful, but damaging.

Thus, if we were primarily responsible for the decision of whether to attack Iran and remove the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, we might well have decided not to. But it was not our decision, and our relationship with America is much more important than allowing ourselves a warm feeling of moral superiority.

Donald Trump has said that he is “very disappointed” in Sir Keir Starmer’s approach, adding that he is “very sad” to see that the special relationship between the two countries “is not what it used to be”. Leaving aside the War of 1812, the lateness of American entry in the Second World War, and Suez, this is a damaging assessment from our closest ally about the state of our association.

It is Keir Starmer’s fault who, by allowing his legal sensitivities to determine his judgment, has in the end supported evil over good. His fetishizing of international law means Britain appears to be on the side of murderous Islamists rather than those who wish to build a better world. In the end, the US will hardly care. It does not need us, but damaging the relationship is an unnecessary price to pay and fails his own nation.

I am delighted to announce the Mogg Unbuttoned tour — a series of live events that will take me from the green benches of Westminster to theatres across the UK.

I would be delighted if you would join me — you can find out more and book your tickets at jacobreesmogglive.com.

You can now earn rewards by referring friends. For instance, if you can encourage three friends to subscribe, you will receive a month’s paid subscription. For more details please see the Leaderboard page.

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It would be a surprisingly normal constitutional event to exclude Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession. It is a reminder that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is an elected hereditary post, not a purely hereditary one. This has been true since time immemorial and is not a modern invention, in spite of endless propaganda to the contrary.

Asser’s Life of Alfred begins with a genealogy which goes all the way back through the kings of Wessex to Woden, a pagan god, and from Woden back to Noah, and then finally to Adam. This was intended to show that Alfred benefited from a divinely arranged hereditary succession. This has always been an important myth about the monarchic succession in England.

It is, of course, false, as Alfred was chosen to be king rather than being the direct heir, as at least one of his elder brothers’ sons was still alive. The propaganda around kingship and the reality did not and does not match.

Indeed, the succession from eldest son to eldest son was not routine until the 13th century, with previous kings having been semi-elected or seized the throne by brute power. For example, the great men of the realm decided to elect Harold Godwinson as king following the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, while in 1100 Henry I simply snatched the crown while his elder brother was out of the country. Interestingly, Henry married a descendant of Alfred the Great, which is a reminder that while heredity was not conclusive, it was helpful. Even at the end of the 12th century, John took the throne from Arthur, whom he then murdered.

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It was Castlereagh’s misfortune that two of England’s most famous poets, Shelley and Byron, both lived while he was the height of his political power. Both despised him, with the result that his reputation has been forever sullied. The fashionable bien pensants loathed him because he backed Austria over Italian nationalism, monarchies against Jacobins and they blamed him for the Peterloo Massacre (Castlereagh was foreign secretary so had no responsibility for Peterloo, but as Leader of the House he had to answer for it in Parliament).

All of the above was wholly unjustified, as he is one of the most important figures in British history, who achieved the essential forerunner of prosperity, that is to say, peace.

Robert Stewart was born on the 18th June, 1769, so the victory at Waterloo was perhaps the best birthday present he could possibly have received, when he reached the age of 46. He was an exact contemporary of Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, who was born a few weeks earlier in the same Irish city of Dublin.

He is usually known as Lord Castlereagh, a courtesy title he received when his father was advanced to the Earldom of Londonderry in 1796. However, he sat in the House of Commons for all of his political career, as by the time he inherited his peerage and left the Commons, his life was near its end.

Castlereagh was an acolyte of Pitt the Younger, but not as close to him as George Canning, and the two were in competition for much of their careers. Famously, they fought a duel in 1809, the last instance of two cabinet ministers taking to the duelling field against each other. At 217 years distance, this seems all quite silly, but at the time it was literally a matter of life and death, only five years after Alexander Hamilton had been killed in a duel by the then vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr.

The matter of honour arose because Canning had been conspiring to force Castlereagh out of office and was caught in the act. He wrote to Canning, accusing him of being “in breach of every Principle, of good Faith, both public and private”. Both fired two shots in the duel and Canning was hit in the leg by Castlereagh’s second bullet, which satisfied him as the offended party.

This damaged both their reputations, and that of the government, but not permanently. Castlereagh came back into office in 1812 as Foreign Secretary, the role that defined him. He was also Leader of the House of Commons, which in those days, if the Prime Minister was in the Lords, meant he was in charge of the government’s Commons business, and was effectively the party leader in the Commons.

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I am delighted to announce the Mogg Unbuttoned tour — a series of live events that will take me from the green benches of Westminster to theatres across the UK.

Tour Dates & Venues
• Sat 18 Apr – Courtyard Studio, Hereford
• Fri 08 May – Huntingdon Hall, Worcester
• Fri 15 May – Walker Theatre, Shrewsbury
• Tue 19 May – New Theatre Royal, Lincoln
• Sun 24 May – Theatre Royal, Winchester

These evenings promise insight, humour and a live Q&A.

I would be delighted if you would join me — you can find out more and book your tickets at jacobreesmogglive.com.

With every good wish,

Jacob

High energy prices, excessive welfare and an absurd regulatory burden have combined to stop European economies growing for most of the 21st century. There are some exceptions, but they are either historically weak economies that have been catching up, or a parasite economy such as the Republic of Ireland that has cleverly arranged its tax laws to live off the other member states.

Comparing growth between the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom since 2000 is a salutary experience. America has averaged 2.1% per annum, the UK is in second place with 1.5%, France next at 1.2%, with Germany the laggard, the winner of the wooden spoon, with a mere 1.0%.

This matters, because 0.6%, the difference between the UK and the USA, means that the cumulative growth of the US is 68% against 45% of the UK, so each year of lower growth has a compounded effect that has meant that the main Europe economies are much weaker than the US.

Yet the Remainers, who seem to be ever more powerful in the Labour Party, still want to take the UK back into the orbit of the EU. This makes absolutely no sense when the EU is not just a failing economic model, but a failed one. It has not now worked properly since the end of the post-war reconstruction boom.

However, aligning more with the EU comes with even more serious risks. Any attempt to join the Customs Union would invalidate the free trade agreements we have signed with other trading partners, including India, which will be one of the dynamos of 21st century growth; Australia, which can replace expensive European food imports to the considerable benefit of living standards; and the CPTPP, which could be one of the most important trading partnerships in history.

Since we left the EU, 2,400 tariffs have been removed on goods we do not produce, helping consumers and also reducing the bureaucracy of trade. Putting them back on again would cause supply chain interruptions just as the final covid related ones are going.

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